Posted
by
CmdrTacoon Tuesday April 05, 2005 @09:13AM
from the i-can't-see-my-house-from-here dept.

Ant writes "BetaNews reports that Google quietly updated its maps service late Monday to include satellite imagery, a first in the industry... Much of Google Maps remains the same - just with detailed pictures from high-tech satellites instead of standard map graphics. Maps can be dragged to view adjacent areas, which means users do not have click and wait for graphics to reload. Zooming is also instantaneous with the help of a slider placed atop the map." The resolution doesn't seem very high, but the integration is very seamless.

And it would be wrong, imo, since the photos were/are still available from many other sources.

I would think the reason was cost. The photos cost money to licence, cost money to store, and cost money to transmit. Mapquest is primarily a mapping/direction service. Adding photos didn't add much to their product, but added to their cost. My guess: It simply wasn't worth it.

Except that Aerial Ortho dataset was produced by the USGS and is public domain. Check out World Wind 1.3 [nasa.gov] for a smooth-scrolling, translatable, 3d globe that dynamically downlads any dataset you request and grabs higher res versions as you zoom in.

Perhaps that is why certain images from Google have been obscured? Several buildings on and near the White House property have been covered up. The entire grounds of the Capitol building are blurry (while the surrounding area is 10x or 100x sharper)... Commence the conspiracy theories!

I don't normally reply to myself, but what the hell... I've thought more about it.

I'll blow any conspiracy theory with a counterexample

Of course, the White House and Capitol really are obscured, but it just proves that our elected representatives are paranoid. The DoD is obviously not scared of a few satellite photos. The big wigs there are probably thinking something along the lines of "you think that's cool? You should see our imagery!"

Actually, the "satellite" images that Google is using for city-level viewing are aerial [ortho-]photos. And even though they are watermarked with 2005 Google all over, they are actually several years old (at least in Wake Co., NC. - they appear to be 2002). Like someone else posted, they appear to be the same photos that have been available elsewhere, like terraserver [terraserver.com]. And yes, MapQuest used to have this. It pissed me off when they took it off. But now I have GMaps and they are so much sweeeter anyways

Non-US territory is not included in Google maps AFAIK, although they seem to have wider satellite coverage, in particular of Latin (North) America - I think they are getting the data from different sources. You can zoom in to varying degrees (not much in Europe, but pretty far in Mexico, Cuba, etc and even more in Bermuda.)

Canada is the exception, Google now considering it basically part of the US and so providing maps;-)

MapQuest was supplied with imagery by GlobeXplorer [globexplorer.com]. Both Keyhole (hence Google) and GlobeXplorer use a mix of public and private sources, so some of what you see on one service is also on the other. For example, many states have started taking their own aerial photos, which are made available online. I live in NY, and Google shows me the same image of my house that I can get more easily from NYSGIS [state.ny.us] (at 1 foot resolution, too, whereas Google only goes down to 1 meter). GlobeXplorer, however, has 6 inch resol

multimap.com has had satellite images linked into their maps of the UK for years now. Of course, it's UK only (maybe other European countries by now), so doesn't count on Slashdot, unlike Google's US only service.

Thats not true, I remember some Map website USE to have satelite photos... I can't remember if it was Mapquest or not. But they had a button that came up that said "Aerial View" on locations they had satelite data for.

So yeah... Google wasn't the first to offer it. I'll try and find out what website it was.

Indeed you're right. Multimap [multimap.com] has
had aerial photos for a while... For example,
this [multimap.com] is where I live! The Aerial photos
are actually provided by Getmapping.com [getmapping.com]. The aerial photos aren't available for all locations, but certianly most of the UK is covered.

Try getting directions, then change to satellite view. Your route is still overlayed perfectly over the roads you need to take, even though the images are slightly different than the vector map.

This is one of the coolest things I've ever seen. If it was possible to center the Google map based on lat/lon, just imagine how easy it would be to write a script that took input from your GPS and used it to scroll the map.

Googles map software is pretty nifty. It seems like something that wouldn't be to hard to whip up for any large image file.

I can imagine taking some very high resolution artwork and displaying it using this technology. I can zoom in to the max resolution or your can scroll around forever.

Anybody have any software that would take a large image file and apply a google-map-like interface to it? The software should be something as simple as:

Resize the image to various resolutions

Break the images into 200x200 pixel chunks at each resolution and save those chunks as individual image files

Put a javascript interface on

If you are smart about your image naming conventions you shouldn't even need a powerful webserver. The whole thing could be served up via static files from a webserver with enough disk space and a big enough pipe.

I'd like to see this for things like:

Local maps such as for state parks

Scanned artwork such as paintings - Like the Gigapixel Tapestries [slashdot.org] covered the other day.

Break the images into 200x200 pixel chunks at each resolution and save those chunks as individual image files

Put a javascript interface on

Rather than working with fixed resolution images, you're must better off using wavelet compression [wikipedia.org] to store your images. As well as up to 50:1 compression ratios, you can easily stream out whatever resolution you need, without having to uncompress all the data first. ECW [es-geo.com] and related formats have been used by GIS [wikipedia.org] systems for many years, long before Google joined the party. Still, it's nice to see so much information publically available.

I'm certainly looking forward to when Google add the UK data, so I don't have to rely on the limited service from GetMapping [getmapping.com]:-)

The browser doesn't need to understand the wavelet format directly, it's fed image sections after they've been re-encoded in a suitable format (JPEG usually). GetMapping deals with the image in 250x250-pixel blocks on the browser side. They're extracted from a master ECW and converted to JPG images on the server side, then streamed back to a set position in the browser. The source URL for ea

It doesn't make sense to store the data in a complex format to reduce disk space requirements. It just doean't scale. You don't need "oodles" of disk space either; in fact holding every zoom level (assuming power-of-two zoom levels, which is what everybody uses including Google) only requires 1/3 more space than holding the highest zoom level by itself (not 2 or 5 times more space as was speculated earlier). OTOH producing the images on the fly and encoding them to JPEGs on every request would require a

The Google images are not straight off of TerraServer. Actually to even say that perpetuates a misnomer. TerraServer is not a source of imagery. It simply serves public-domain USGS images which were created using our tax dollars. I'm not complaining, they are serving the public interest, but I'd be upset if they started putting watermarks on them or claiming copyright.

The Google images come from DigitalGlobe's QuickBird satellite. This is a private, for-profit corporation which raised enough money to put up their own satellite and start taking pictures which they are now selling on the open-market. I'm sure that their contract with Google necessitates the watermarks. Fair enough.

Looks like, at least in parts, the imagery is from an older dataset than what's on the Keyhole service. I live in a large neighborhood that's been under construction for 3 years across the various sections, and there are more houses in the Keyhole dataset than on the Google Maps satellite images.

Looks like, at least in parts, the imagery is from an older dataset than what's on the Keyhole service. I live in a large neighborhood that's been under construction for 3 years across the various sections, and there are more houses in the Keyhole dataset than on the Google Maps satellite images.

We were already talking about this this morning on our local geocaching assocation forum. Two of us (St. Paul and Apple Valley, MN) show that the images are at least 4 years old or newer.

My house was built in 2001 and it shows it there. Google doesn't know my address and gives something nearby but I still can see the house:)

I'm looking at my house right now. A tree that was cut down early in 2003 is still there. A circular path started in summer 2002 (made by exercising a horse, so it's very visible) is also there. And by the amount of greenery here in the desert, and that our veggie garden had already died off, it is probably early in the dry season. So at least in my neighbourhood, the image appears to date from about July of 2002.

The resolution is good enough that I can see the single stripe down the middle of a nearby two-lane highway. I can also see two cars and an 18-wheeler. The smallest visible object is a 4x8 sheet of plywood atop the shelter in my corral. I can also see my kennel concrete, which at that point is 15 feet wide, represented by 5 pixels on the saved image (you can pillage them via Moz's Page Info function). So there's the max resolution -- one pixel = about 3 feet (plus or minus some blurring).

If you look at the Chicago pictures, it shows Soldier Field under construction. Demolition began after the 2001 season, and the image looks like it's just starting the new construction, which happened in early 2002). So that gives roughly a year time frame for these pictures.

Meigs field is also still there, and the building I live in is just beginning construction (it was finished in late 2003 I believe).

Data for my area was taken in July or August of 2003 at about 9-10am on a Saturday morning.:}

Take a look at the image [google.com] and you can derive the time easily... The white blob in the very middle at the top is our water tower. Makes a great sundial to get the time.:}

Then take the fact that this is a Seventh-day Adventist institution and I know by the fact that campus is empty except for the horde of cars at the church (the grey roofed structure just north of the road circle) that it is a Saturday.

... thats the standard for commercial imagery and, with CitiPix flyovers (non-space) it's down around 1/3 of that.

Frankly most of what's available is only good for mapping, and that isn't that good at best. Most of the images have been jpg'd to the point that an 8x8 block is destroying what little detail is available.

For example, 8x8 blocked JPG at 10 meters per pixel is a boatload of image data lost.

The region of Waterloo (ON, CAN) has aerial photography at 10cm resolution (~4in) in B&W for 2000 and 2003. I've been looking for a house, and this is a really great site for checking out the state of yards without visiting them. You can see trees, fences, the size of driveways, if the house is going to be in the shadow of an apartment building . ..

I honestly have no issue with 10cm resolution being available to the general public. No tin foil on my head.

Mapquest (I'm 90% sure, could have been something else I suppose) used to offer satelite imagry as well - much the same way google does now, just click on the Satelite button and get an image instead of a map. This was years ago.

Do you mean that Google is the first in the industry to have satellite images on a map-site?Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten [aftenposten.no] have had this on their map-service for almost a year now. At any time in the map-search you can switch between a vector-based map and the satellite images. Very neat:)

Here in the UK the online provider MultiMap lets you do the same thing, just with aerial photography rather than sattelite imagery (it obivously takes a lot less time to photo the UK with a plane than the US, so planes are more feasible).

How is this really "new" - in fact, MultiMap has an even cooler feature, which uses a Java applet to overlay the photos with the map, so the area your mouse is over gets a photo superimposed over it.

The only advantage Google has that I can see is a higher free resolution - if you want high res photos on Multimap, you have to pay.

The only advantage Google has that I can see is a higher free resolution - if you want high res photos on Multimap, you have to pay.

Nah, on Google I zoomed in on New York. It stopped when long island took up the whole screen, no further zooming was possible. So, you can't see to the street level it would seem, which you get on Multimap for free.

If you had actually looked at the map in satellite view, you know, like this whole story is about, you'd see that the rest of the world is actually included now (only in satellite view). Your joke might have been funny if it weren't for the fact that it was made about a hundred times when the map service first came out and it was actually true that Google's map only showed the US.

Did you ever think that maybe there are "security" issues with posting accurate street-map satellite images of countries on the 'net? This probably explains why the images are "several" years old, and why Google might not have had the ability to get non-US maps.

This isn't a first in the industry, Microsoft did this over 5 years ago, with their Terraserver project. http://terraserver.microsoft.com/ [microsoft.com] It might have not had the same goals as Google Maps, but it definitly is the same concept.

It is somewhat disconcerting to be scrolling around the area where I grew up, and see one half of a lake in full summer splendor, with boats frolicing and surrounded by green hills...and the other half of the lake is frozen solid.

Nice one. I thought it was cool that the shadows of the towers of the George Washington Bridge (New York City) were pointing in different directions. (Sorry I couldn't get a URL, so you'll have to search for it yourself. Try "178th and Broadway New York City" then scroll left a little.)

Anybody else notice the watermarks over the imagery that reads "(C) 2005 Google". It's especially visible over light areas such as beaches. Of course it's their right, just interesting. And there is a fixed copyright in the lower right that reads "Imagery (c) 2005 DigitalGlobe, EarthSat", at least in some California areas.

Anyway, this is really nice. To be able to switch between traditional line-art mode and imagery. It's neat to do something like a text search on a hospital and then switch to image m

I thought most of the satellite image services now put a giant white block over certain places in the US. Maybe google will add that later. Not that anyone in the world DOESN'T know what the white house and pentagon look like, but here you go anyway...

Great googly-moogly. Stop with cheap low-res sat photos and try adding a scale to your maps. You know, one of the basic features of a map? The little hashed bar that gives me some idea how far it is from one point on the map to another. I realize it is not innovative or amazingly cool, but it kinda renders your maps useless otherwise.

Notice the big fuzzy section. I used to work there and can tell you that that is Kodak Park (well, whats left of it as Kodak Management lays off the workforce, moves the operations to China, then demolishes the buildings- more layoffs next week).

The entire region is blurred out and unusable, so that you can't see into it.

What I'd like to know is whether or not this is common for other areas (anyone know lat/long of an oil refinery?) and other areas of key civil importance.

Mapquest had this about 3 years ago... I had zoomed into my office and could actually identify my car in the parking lot. I have a great image of Washington D.C. from mapquest too, with the Washington Monument casting a shadow like a big sundial.

When typing in an address, there is a default zoom level (3, to give it an arbitrary marker). Trying a few locations in my area, that default level has no satellite data. It would be nice of them to decrease the zoom unti an actual viewable area is displayed. For example, this random location in Newark, OH [google.com] automatically comes up as "does not have imagery for this zoom level." If they checked to see if there were imagery at that level and eased back on the zoom until there was imagery, it would be an improvement. (Well, technically speaking... Newark is not the prettiest place.)

http://mygmaps.com/ [mygmaps.com] enables you to create, save and host custom data files and display them with Google Maps. It includes a standalone viewer so you can show your custom map on your site.

Wow, even though I'm not american, the seamless scrolling makes the application superb way to waste time - zoom into a city, and just start scrolling along a road, and you never know where you are going to get!

Rather nice if you want to plan a trip, too, as you get an idea how things look like along the way! And if the resolution gets better in distant future, who will need to do the actual trip anyway?

If a service like this really becomes popular, it has vast potential - just zoom to where you are, and y

You're both quite correct. See the SecurityFocus article "Secret Service airbrushes aerial photos [securityfocus.com]". Note that the link to the old vs new images has changed since the article was written - they're now here [eyeball-series.org]. You might notice a remarkable similarity between a couple of the retouched pictures and Google's White House imagery.

To you and all the others who made this suggestion (and who were modded as "insightful" rather than "redundant") the maps thing is still only a BETA after all. One day soon, the mighty google will give you all your christmas presents, with added paranoia.

I don't mean to be rude (honestly), but your comments sound exactly like Comic Book Guy in that Simpsons episode. He tells Bart how upset he is at an Itchy & Scratchy episode, how they have so let him down, and Bart asks "why are you complaining? They offer you something completely for free! who are YOU to complain?"

Comic Book Guy's answer: "As a viewer, I feel they owe me."

if you don't like the free service google offers, you said it yourself - mapquest already does it apparently. AND... it's 3 fewer letters to type in than maps.google.com. So there's your answer.

BS! You can't see the map (grayed out), but you can turn on the satellite - and it's visible! I for one see clearly an airfield (looks abandoned, yet there is a plane in the middle of the airstrip, and some vehicles that look like trucks).
I really wonder wh###CARRIER LOST

Go to mappy.com.
Search for a big city. I've only tried Brussels.
There's a Transparency slider at the top left.
Mappy has had satellite maps with transparency for at least a few months. It has been truly interactive for ages. I have no idea why nobody's mentioned this, and why anybody thinks Google's US-only, slow, hardly interactive maps are any good at all.